The trial of a man and a teenager charged with the killing of popular Oughterard publican and teacher John Kenny could not go ahead at Galway Circuit Criminal Court this week as they failed to turn up and bench warrants for their arrest were subsequently issued.

A jury has heard how a man who had got behind on his debts to drug suppliers was abducted by two men and taken to a country laneway shed where he was subjected to the “most horrific” assault for more than an hour.

An argument which started when a car revved aggressively to get a crowd out of its way quickly turned into a street brawl in which one man was left in a two-week coma in Dublin suffering terrible pain and having a quarter of his skull removed, a jury has heard.

A trial is underway at Galway Circuit Criminal Court after a 41-year-old Dublin man pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting three sisters while holidaying on an island in Connemara during a two year period.

A Connemara fisherman charged with stabbing a man during a drunken scuffle over two years ago was warned by a circuit court judge to stop “codding the court” and to take his alcohol difficulties seriously in order to avoid a jail sentence.

A former Tuam drug dealer and heroin addict, who was caught with almost €25,000 worth of drugs in his car and at his apartment last year, has been given until November by a circuit court judge to reduce his intake of methadone before a prison sentence is imposed.